Traditional digital video recording (“DVR”) devices, such as set-top box devices located in subscribers' homes, include hard drives or the like within which recorded media content may be stored for subsequent playback. Unfortunately, a DVR device's hard drive may run out of available storage space after a certain amount of recorded media content data is stored therein.
A network DVR system, on the other hand, may provide virtually unlimited storage capabilities for users of the network DVR system by remotely recording and storing copies of media content (e.g., within one or more network-based servers maintained by a provider of the network DVR system) in response to requests by users to record the media content. The network DVR system may subsequently receive a request provided by a user to play back the recorded media content by way of a local computing device (e.g., a set-top box device, a mobile computing device, etc.), and, in response, provide (e.g., stream) one of the copies of the media content to the local computing device in order to facilitate playback of the recorded media content by the local computing device.
In order to be in compliance with various copyright laws, some conventional network DVR systems record and indefinitely store a unique copy of a media program for each user who provides a request to record the media program, even though a certain percentage of those users may never initiate playback of the media program and even though playback demand for the media program may significantly decrease over time. This can require significant computing (e.g., processing and storage) resources, especially in cases where a relatively large number of users provide requests to record a particular media program.